Feb. 22, 2016 – ST.CLAIR, Michigan – Blue Forest, the luxury treehouse designers, have recently completed their ‘At the Water’s Edge’ project, an ambitious bespoke treehouse complex, complete with Kebony decking throughout. Following the success of Blue Forest’s previous project which incorporated Kebony, The Quiet Treehouse – a stand-alone luxury tree home which was displayed at the Ideal Home Show in London Earl’s Court and RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower show - Blue Forest have decided to work Kebony into another of their impressive eco-builds.

The At the Water’s Edge project consists of a fairy tale inspired treehouse village with an enchanting aesthetic to enthral and amaze children for hours on end. Turreted individually designed treehouses provide kids with their own personal spaces to retreat to via cargo nets and Indiana Jones style rope bridges, while The Lake House, with its private gym, luxury showers and Koi Carp Lake creates a tranquil escape for adults.

Kebony was chosen for the decking throughout the project, both at ground level and for the raised flooring between the treehouses. It was picked both for its beauty and striking natural colour – a rich brown that mellows over time into a more muted silver grey patina, in addition to its robust stability. Blue Forest is the world’s leading luxury treehouse and eco-home builders. They create treehouses which blend seamlessly into their natural surroundings and reflect the ambience of the environment in which they are built, aiming to bring people back in touch with nature and with a childhood sense of freedom.

Environmental credentials and sustainability are a key element in all designs for Blue Forest, and so Kebony is a perfect material to work with. The patented Kebony technology, which pickles wood with a bio-based liquid derived from agricultural crop waste, ensures that it has the qualities of tropical hardwood while being far less environmentally damaging. The process utilizes fast growing softwood trees for the raw materials, to ensure Kebony can be responsibly sourced from a sustainable forest. As the treehouse will be exposed to the elements it needs to endure high levels of weathering, so the durability of the treated Kebony wood was essential.

“We are passionate about delivering high quality eco-homes and treehouses which complement and blend with their natural surroundings,” said Simon Payne, Director at Blue Forest. “Kebony is a perfect material for these builds as it develops a beautiful weathered colouring over time which enhances the natural look of our projects without compromising on the structural integrity of the wood. We’re really satisfied with how this project has been realized and plan to use Kebony a lot more in our future projects.”

“Blue Forest truly believe in their projects and it’s a great opportunity to be able to work with a company that is so passionate about delivering a beautiful, environmentally conscious product,” said

Adrian Pye, Head of International Sales at Kebony. “The combination of Blue Forest design and Kebony wood is absolutely stunning and we look forward to seeing many more playful, creative designs from them.”

The Kebony technology is a patented process which enhances the properties of non-durable wood species to give them similar characteristics to the best performing woods. Through a sustainable process wood species such as pines and some non-durable hardwoods are impregnated with a bio-based liquid derived from agricultural crop waste. With the addition of heat, the furfuryl polymer is permanently grafted into the wood cell wall, resulting in greatly improved durability and dimensional stability.

*Kebony Wood

Kebony is suitable for both internal and external applications that demand high performance and great aesthetics including: decking, flooring, cladding, roofing, windows, and furniture. Over time Kebony acquires its characteristic silver-grey patina when exposed to sun and rain, whilst not losing its performance characteristics. With improved durability and dimensional stability Kebony is becoming increasingly the choice of leading architects and developers enabling them to use wood in projects without causing environmental degradation. Kebony has been used internationally in projects from commercial, public, residential and marine, for example Hunter’s Point in New York, the Mary Rose museum and both residential and commercial buildings on the UK’s seafront. A recent study by Norwegian environmental consulting firm Bergfald & Co. demonstrated that Kebony has a substantially lower carbon footprint than its tropical hardwood equivalents.